P’sinan town mulls state of calamity due to typhoid cases

CALASIAO, Pangasinan — This town’s officials are planning to declare a state of calamity so it could extend assistance to at least 57 residents, 40 of them students of the Calasiao Comprehensive National High School (CCNHS), who have fallen ill with typhoid fever.

This, as classes were suspended at the CCNHS in Poblacion West yesterday to allow municipal health personnel to carry out two days of defogging of the school premises.

The other day, Mayor Roy Macanlalay shut down seven carinderias (eateries) suspected of selling unsanitary food, upon the recommendation of Dr. Jesus Arturo de Vera, municipal health officer.

Even the CCNHS canteen was not spared; it was temporarily prevented from selling cooked food while the typhoid fever outbreak is looked into.

Macanlalay said he has consulted with regional officials of the Department of Health (DOH) in San Fernando City, La Union as to whether there is a need to declare a state of calamity.

De Vera said the DOH could not yet determine if there is an epidemic of typhoid fever, explaining that such a finding takes into consideration the percentage of people afflicted and the nature of the disease.

The CCNHS has about 5,600 students.

De Vera said they are closely monitoring those affected for "contact tracing" or determining whether they have infected family members or other people with whom they have had close contact.

He said this would give them an idea if the outbreak was not only confined to the school.

De Vera said they are now checking other hospitals and clinics here and in nearby Dagupan City where some patients might have gone to for treatment.

By Monday, he said they could establish what really caused the water and food-borne disease when the regional DOH office releases the results of its bacteriological water analysis.